Universe Traders often on standby?

[Finrayy]

Hey all,

I've just got my second set of Universe Traders up and running. I have 4 Mercury Super Freighters, and I just bought, kitted out and levelled up 3 Consus ATs. After getting them all to level 8, I gave them the universe trader command, as normal.

The issue is, they're spending a lot of time on standby, not trading, just sitting idle in a factory. I have 150+ sectors visted with advanced satellites in most of the safe sectors. In my previous X3:AP save, I had 30+ universe traders all going constantly throughout the universe. Now I'm at 7 and they can't find trade routes.. What gives?

(Also, suggestions for sectors to level up in would be great. I miss Empires Edge but the Paranid are enemies now).

[Cycrow]

At level 8 their range is limited, so it matters where you start them. Also, they wont make use of the jumpdrive until later levels, so if a number of sectors are blacklisted, they may not be able to get to some places, as they wont fly through any blacklisted sectors

Making sure a jumpdrive and navigation software mk1 is installed, and set the auto jump settings can allow them to start using the jumpdrive earlier.

[Finrayy]

All of that was already the case in earlier releases, no?

Basically, I'm doing the exact same thing, and getting different results. Was there actually any changes made to the UT scripts for FL?

[Sovereign01]

What's the best way of getting STs enough experience to become UTs? And for that matter, is it better to get smaller, faster traders or bigger, slower ones? In AP I had traders running around with holds mostly empty. It's not as though I need the credits they earn, just to boost my trade rank.

[Finrayy]

Erm, I got most of my info from this post: viewtopic.php?t=121043

I get one small TS, get it up to level 8, start universe trader. This makes credits to buy 3-4 more small TSs, get them up to level 8, then start them universe trading. These make money to buy Super Freighters, and from there on, only buy Super Freighters. There are a new class of armoured Super Freighters in FL which I'm just trying out. They have almost double the freight capacity of regular SFs and waaaaay more shields, with comparable movement speed.

I don't really keep an eye on the cargo bays, once they hit level 8 I treat it like set and forget, unless it runs into trouble and needs repaired etc, but I think the reasoning is if you find a good deal, you want to be able to load up as much of it as possible. Might be worth running around with half a cargobay of computer components most of the time for those times the trader finds a full XL SPP and can load up 15k cells for 12ea.

As for how to level up, it used to be as simple as send them to Empires Edge, and hit go. However, with the new race relations, you need to have pretty high Paranid rep for them not to be aggressive in core sectors. I've been babysitting them, giving them a new sector to trade in constantly. I've been sticking mostly to core Argon and Boron space, places with E-cells or food are usually decent, but I'm finding the sector trader will get at max 2 maybe 3 trades in a sector before going on standby. Once you get the traders to level 6, they can look to the next sector for deals. At this point I've been sending them to Aladna Hill, so they can trade in Light of Heart and Akeela's Beacon also. (Akeela's Beacon is a massive sector and the power plants are far away from the gates, just keep that in mind).

[Cycrow]

There has been a number of changes/improvements to MK3 traders in FL.

Although the trade route finding logic is pretty much the same.

Most of the changes are in the finding/buying of upgrades, the refueling logic, and the ability to sell anything in the cargo bay so its less likely to end up with full cargo it can't sell.

However there are a number of things in FL that could effect it. The blacklisting and navigation is a big change that could block the ships from trading in large areas.

The encomemy is also slightly different, there's more competition with free traders especially for energy cells. And some with also use jump drives to make them more efficient

[Hwitvlf]

I suspect the issue is "at level 8 their range is limited, so it matters where you start them". Especially when you start multiple UTs in the same sector at once. I just jump them to a new, good trading sector and reissued the command. In TC/AP, UTs would fly through blacklisted sectors to refuel. That's why they were always getting destroyed in the conflict sectors even if you blacklisted them.

A different but related issue happened when I was hostile with most factions besides Teladi and Pirates; UTs were getting stuck at pirate bases deep in hostile sectors. It appeared they would sell to the pirate base, then get stuck looking for a nearby refueling location.

I had some 20 UTs at maximum level and I would routinely find 2 to 7 of them idling at the base in Quiet Tides. If I sold E-Cells to the nearby Pirate base in Vestibule of Creation, the UTs would jump there to buy and resume their trading. Same problem at Getsu Fune pirate base.

[iXenon]

Recently I figured out that lot of me UTs are on 'Standby' or 'Searching trade route...' All of them have level 25 in my case. And another problem - they sometimes have no ECs in cargo and no SPP nearby. That means I have to 'recover' then manually, sending onto them a ship with ECs for refuelling. I tried to change their autojump settings, increasing (and then decreasing on the next attempt) the number of sectors for JD, but it didn't help. Looks like they sometimes consider ECs as a good and sell it and end up with no ECs in cargo, but I'm not sure. Another idea was their cargo size. It's really huge and some station couldn't accept all the amount these ships bring, so some more rides are needed. So, I tried to move the traders to ships with much lower cargo bay but it didn't help as well. I also thought if they work very effective and NPC stations simple don't need the goods so often, but it isn't the case, I believe, because SM always can find a station for selling. So, it seems the logic of UT may be a bit broken or just sub-optimal sometimes.

[Cycrow]

for UT's is possible they end up getting stuck due to the blacklist, especially if your ranks are fluctuating alot.

ie, they might be blocked off getting to a SPP then runs out of the energy cells it had.
it shouldn't sell all of them when trading, but it may use them all up if unable to resupply

[iXenon]

I think I have tried various options regarding lists, but it didn't help. What I remember now, most of the ships that got stuck (can't say about all of them) were in RSL systems, i.e. systems without gates. I believe when UT algorithm was created these systems didn't exist, so may it happen that script sometimes looks for gates and ignores TOA?

[Cycrow]

It's unlikely, UTs use the same core movement scripts as everything else which have been updated in FL.

These was a bug where they were not untilising the blacklist correctly when searching for deals (fixed in the unoffical patch)

But if the UT is not using the blacklist it shouldn't make a difference